History

Dust Bowl Timeline

plus…

• Establishment of the Soil Conservation Service
  (now the Natural Resources Conservation Service)
  
• Birth of Soil Conservation Districts in Idaho and the
  Idaho Soil Conservation Commission

1931
Severe drought hits the Midwest and Southern plains. As crops die, dust from the over-plowed and over-grazed land begins to blow.

1932
The number of dust storms increases. Fourteen are reported during the year.

1933
28 dust storms reported.

May 11, 1934
First great dust storm occurs in the Dust Bowl area of the Great Plains. Even though the Great Plains are 2,000 miles away, the dust storm blots out the sun over the nation’s capital, drives grit between the teeth of New Yorkers and scatters dust on the decks of ships 300 miles out to sea.

Cities along the Atlantic seaboard were puzzled, but not startled, when a yellow haze filled the sky for an afternoon, bringing a premature dusk. It wasn’t until newspapers explained the phenomenon that thousands of urbanites realized they had experienced their first dust storm and were still a bit dubious about the Weather Bureau’s declaration that this dust traveled all the way from Nebraska and the Dakotas.

March 6, 1935
Second great dust storm occurs. Clouds of topsoil blown from the fields of Kansas, Colorado, Texas, and Oklahoma once again sweep over Washington, D.C. and other eastern cities and out over the ocean.

It took this repetition of the menace of shifting farmlands to bring wind erosion to prominence in the public’s mind. Headlines everywhere repeatedly flashed the news that the worst dust storm in history was being experienced.

Six deaths in a week were attributed to a strange malady dubbed "dust pneumonia."

A disheartening evacuation of some 2 million acres threatened to begin overnight.

Children in the Midwest scurried to school with moistened cloths clutched to their noses.

A Kansas oil driller reported digging down 18 feet and finding nothing but dry powder all the way.

Bronze sunsets in the East. Mid-day darkness in the Midwest.

It was then the nation knew those billowy clouds of yellow dust in the East, echoing the howling, blustering winds of the Midwest, were an omen that couldn’t be ignored.

March 24, 1935
Not to be outdone by the choking dust storms of the Dust Bowl, the Pacific Northwest experiences muddy rain, a combination of silt and rain, centered in the vicinity of Pullman, Washington. Dust, blown from the wind-swept regions of central Oregon and Washington into the precipitation belt in the Palouse area, converts the rain into muddy water. The silt burden was so heavy that windshield wipers left the glass murky. The muddy rain emphasizes to local people the need for wind erosion control in the Pacific Northwest as well as in the Great Plains.

March 25, 1935
SCS created as a permanent agency in the U.S. Department of Agriculture by order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

April 14, 1935
Black Sunday. The worst black blizzard of the Dust Bowl occurs, causing extensive damage.

April 15, 1935
Dust Bowl gets its name--the day after Black Sunday.

The drought alone didn’t cause the black blizzards. It was the combination of drought and misuse of the land that led to incredible devastation during the Dust Bowl years. Originally covered with grasses that held the fine soil in place, settlers plowed the land when they homesteaded the area. Wheat crops, in high demand during World War I exhausted the topsoil. Overgrazing by cattle and sheep stripped the plains of their cover.

April 27, 1935
Hugh Hammond Bennett (known as the Father of Soil and Water Conservation) gained the support of Congress with help of a providentially timed storm from the plains that hit Washington, D.C. while he was testifying before a congressional committee. Congress declared soil erosion a national menace. Roosevelt signed into law the Soil Conservation Act of 1935, establishing SCS in the Department of Agriculture (formerly the Soil Erosion Service in the U.S. Department of Interior.)

February 27, 1937
President Roosevelt sends a letter to governors of all the states urging passage of state legislation to organize soil conservation districts, which would enable USDA to provide assistance to local districts. Soil conservation districts are one of the few grassroots organizations set up by the New Deal that are still in operation.

March 9, 1939
Governor Bottolfsen signs Idaho’s Soil Conservation District Law. It includes provisions for creation of a State Soil Conservation Commission to help form and coordinate conservation districts.

Fall 1939
Rain comes, finally bringing an end to the drought. During the next few years, with the coming of World War II, the country is pulled out of the Depression and the Plains once again become golden with wheat.

1940
Many of the demonstration and CCC work areas in Idaho are the first to organize districts--Latah,
Bear Lake, Portneuf, Squaw Creek and Mayfield (which later became Elmore).

1944
Supervisors of Idaho’s first 11 conservation districts meet in Boise to organize the Idaho Association of Soil Conservation Districts.

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